Barghest

Barghests have two forms: their ordinary Goblin form, and their monstrous lupine form. The goblin form usually had a "tell," such as an off-colour eye or a streak of white or grey hair that betrayed it as a shapeshifter's disguise. A barghest killed in this form reverts to its true form as it dies.   When in their true, lupine, form, they are quadrupedal, and have a thick, protective pelt of greyish-brown fur that ran backward along the spine in a distinctive ridge. Averaging around nine feet in length and being between five and eight feet tall at the shoulder, barghests tower even above bugbears in a goblinoid army.   There forepaws have distinct digits almost resembling hands, while their rear paws are very like those of wolves. The ears remain triangular, but move upward on the skull, having only very short fur on the backs of them. Their faces are goblinlike, but more bestial, and they retain the goblin species uncanny night vision. The teeth are elongated into fangs, and the head elongates slightly into a snout but remains overall goblinoid.

Barghests bred naturally with each other, generally producing litters of 5-6 pups. Barghests that bred with true goblins produced a Warghest - a half-fiend half-goblin form.

Barghest pups, once weaned, universally experience an obsessive desire to go to the Material Plane, and the innate ability to do so. This desire is replaced with a yearning to return to Gehenna on arrival, a feat that can only be accomplished by slaying goblinoids.

Obligate carnivores, barghests could survive on any form of meat in a pinch, but obsessively prefer goblin flesh.

All barghests are possessed of a singular and all-consuming desire to return to Gehenna, a process that requires the consumption of no fewer than seventeen Goblin souls. Fiends despite the goblinoid appearance of their second form, they also inherit the programmed Yugoloth desire to exploit their way to advantage by any means necessary.

Barghests, unlike most lupine shifters, retain their ability to speak and understand language while in lupine form, perhaps because of their goblinoid heads.

Barghests have goblinoid names, in order to further infuriate the goblinoid god Maglubiyet.

Created by The General as punishment for a betrayal by Maglubiyet, Barghests are a perversion of the goblinoid form intended to derive their creator god of useful servants. Barghests are born with an innate desire and an innate understanding. The desire is to return to Gehenna, the realm of their creation. The understanding is that their entry will be barred unless they have consumed no fewer than seventeen goblinoid souls - the same as the number of oaths Maglubiyet broke.